When Bruce and I were deciding on a destination for our third small group tour with Overseas Adventure Travel (OAT), we wanted to travel somewhere we had never been.  I contacted my fellow travelers from our Italy and Iceland OAT tours to ask them for their recommendations.  There were a few tours that kept popping up in their responses, so we booked those tours for 2024 and 2025—the first being Argentina and Chile.  I had never been to Argentina, so it would be my 72nd country to visit.  And, I had only visited Valparaiso, Chile, and the nearby wine region for a few days before boarding a ship for a cruise, so I wanted to see more.  Bruce had never been to either country.

Before our departure, we had received e-mails (with a cute photo!) from our trip leader, Andrea Salas.  The emails were loaded with great information, sprinkled with humor and colorful fonts, and full of personality.  It struck us both that Andrea was going to be an excellent and fun trip leader, and it was later confirmed during our pre-trip video conference with her on Whatsapp.  What a hoot!  We couldn’t wait to meet her in person.

On Valentine’s Day morning, we arrived in Buenos Aires for a day on our own before joining the group at Argenta Tower Hotel.  Fortunately, there was only a two-hour time difference from Georgia, so jetlag wasn’t an issue; but, lack of sleep on the redeye left us looking forward to a good night sleep.  Until then, we filled the day by getting our Argentinian pesos, taking Andrea’s advice to partake in Argentina’s awesome gelato at Rapanui, and exploring the city.

Argentinean pesos.  Now, that’s a loaded topic—literally.  $100 USD converted into a tall stack of pesos!  Splitting the wad with Bruce, neither of our wallets could close easily.  At the time, we received slightly more than 100,000 pesos—almost all in 1,000-peso notes, worth about $1 each.  (The extra was in 500 notes.)  Try cramming more than 100 bills in your wallet!  At least it was an easy conversion to calculate when pricing an item.  Knock off a bunch of zeros, and you have your dollar amount.

Their currency is quite attractive.  Here is the front and back of a few of their notes.

(For all photos, click on the image for a full screen view.)

This lovely 20 peso note features a guanaco (llama)—we saw a lot of those cuties while on the road.  This attractive note is only worth 2 cents now.  It probably cost more than that to produce it!

What is going on here?  Argentina has been experiencing 200% annual inflation!   You think the U.S. inflation rate is high? Hah!  I will happily accept our 3.1% inflation rate, thank you very much.

As a result of the Argentinean peso’s value, expenses for extras not included with the tour were very low for us.  Take the (amazing!) gelato at Rapanui, for example.  Our medium-sized cup of two scoops (dark chocolate and dulce de leche (carmel) of gelato set us back only $2.60 USD.  Ohhh, and it was sooo good!  (Andrea was spot-on when she claimed Argentinean gelato was just as good—or better—than Italian gelato.  After all, Argentina was settled by a lot of Italians!)

Thoroughly pleased with our first (of many!) Argentinean gelatos, we secured our bulging wallets and headed to the bookstore Andrea recommended visiting.  Now, this isn’t your ordinary bookstore.  El Ateneo Grand Splendid Bookstore, formerly a theater, was gorgeous!

After a casual dinner at a little Argentinean restaurant frequented by locals, we were ready to call it a day.

This was just the first of our three-week adventure, so I have many more posts to come!  Would you like to see more?  Go to my home page at www.ElainesTravels.com, scroll down to the “Sign me up!” button, and enter your e-mail address.  You will receive an e-mail when each new blog is posted.  Rather than reading the post in the e-mail, click on the blog title to read the post at my site for a better experience.  I do not monetize my blog, so you won’t see any dreaded ads!  If you would like to see a larger image of each photo, just click on it to view it full screen, better viewed on a desktop computer!  Although you can unsubscribe from my blogs at any time, I hope you will stick around for more adventures to come.  We have a lot more travel already scheduled for 2024 and 2025! 

Meanwhile, I will leave you today with a few scenes from near our hotel at San Martin Square.

Coming up next:  Argentina & Chile #2:  Bustling Buenos Aires